A brief opening to lead up to race day, and I'll get to more posts on my trip to CA this week. Today it's just the race report. I landed in San Diego on Thursday night, April 28th and Rich and Mir picked me up. It was late so we just went back to their place and crashed. On Friday we woke up, ran a few errands, and headed on our road trip to Monterrey. We made a pit stop in Santa Barbara for Friday night, and headed up to Monterrey on Saturday, hit up the expo, walked around, had dinner in Carmel, and M and I hit the sack early to prepare for our 4 AM wake up call. SWEEEET!
Sunday May 1st - 4:00 AM
Alarm goes off! M and I stumble out of bed, trying not to make too much noise as R is slumbering on the sofa bed near by ha :) poor Richie. Anyway.... we get ourselves together, eat our breakfast, and head out of the hotel to our bus down the street. The bus took us to the race start where it was freeeeeezing. Helloo!?!?!? Aren't I in CA? I thought it was supposed to be warm alll the time. Nope.... not the case. We were bundled up in our warm gear, huddled near the porta potties, getting cups of warm coffee to keep our hands warm. I think I went to the bathroom like 8 times before the race - no lie. Must've been my nerves for the race. While hanging out pre-race, I ran into AMM, a grade school friend who was also up for the race. AMM is a running rock star! I knew she was going to rock out in the race, and it was good to see her on race day. She told me I was wayyy too hyper for 5 AM (guess I'm used to getting up early - yuck). haha. We wished each other luck and went to our own pre-race routines. What this meant for M and I was to go stand in a Safeway to stay warm :) haha.
On the bus at 445 AM
Staying warm in the Safeway - with our bibs - #s 2917 and 2918!!
As the race announcer called us to the starting line, we had to start taking off our warm clothes and stumble out of the Safeway. We threw our bags to the gear back truck and headed to the starting line. Somehow M and I had consecutive bib numbers - this excited us! We hopped into our corral, and started thinking about how ... wait we were about to run a freaking marathon! This was M's first race and she was a bit nervous. She was very well prepared though - she kicked butt on her training especially with her hill trainings, had a race plan and was ready to rock and roll. I, on the other hand... I would say I was "somewhat" prepared. I had been doing really well with my training until my hip started being stupid, I did little to no hill training (unless you call the Mt Vernon and Cap Crescent Trails hilly), and had no race plan - well my plan was to not die. Ha! I went into the race knowing that no matter my hip would be in pain, and I would be hurting. My plan was to go out hard in the beginning and just let things happen as they needed to, knowing I would struggle. Why not get a good first half if nothing else!? Anyone who has run with me in a race knows I cannot stand being stuck behind people at the start of the race - I'm a total weaver. As we crossed the starting line, I gave M my well wishes and off I went.
My first half of the race felt great.... I wasn't letting my hip get to me, and I was keeping low to mid 8 min miles. Even with the rolling hills, I was happy with how things were going, and even got ahead of the 4:15 and 4:30 pace groups. In my mind I thought hell yea... I will rock out. This changed a bit later :P.
The Big Sur Course was supposed to be a point to point race. With a road collapse in March, they changed it an out and back. I never really looked at the course map or elevation maps. Miranda did... she kept me informed that we wouldn't have to hit Hurricane Point - woohoo - BUT that instead we would have ALL hills instead of just a course with the 2nd half of hills. Oh this was lovely! ha :) somewhere just after the half way point, I started feeling the wall I was about to hit. I saw M after the turnaround and she wasn't too far behind. On the way up a hill, M caught up to me.... and I was struggling. We ran together for a bout a minute and off she went up the hills. She was doing so well! At this point.... I went into my 3 miles of wanting to kill myself. My hip was throbbing, the hills were beating me up, I was cursing every single thing and I was running like some sort of crazy person, trying not to use my glutes muscles, and kind of whipping my leg around. Yea I'm sure I looked very silly. Somewhere during this three mile period, I just started laughing. On one side of my mind I had the voice of JB telling me to" fight through the pain, channel your inner canadian and go for it!" On the other side of my head, I had my brother's voice telling me " not to kill myself and if I have to walk, walk... you've got a vacation ahead of you don't you want to walk during it? don't injure yourself so you can't do anything post-race" Sorry JB but I went for my brother's advice instead. I decided hey what the hell... why over injure my hip... I want to be able to enjoy CA for the rest of my trip. I want to get back to DC and start training for my tri in June and NOT be injured for that race. So Thanks BRO!!!
After I decided to just enjoy the sights and sounds, I felt better. This probably around mile 20, and I thought "6 miles - easy!! I can do 6 miles anytime" of course I was going much slower than I had run in awhile but I didn't care. I tried not to walk too much, and kept "running" - let's say - I continued to go through the motions of running, but this was probably slower than a walker's pace. At one point I looked down at my watch and saw the pace I was going and thought it might take me about 6 hours to get through this race hahaah. But I kept on trucking. I made comments out loud to myself that people were probably asking themselves what was wrong with me about. I almost tripped over a reflector in the middle of the street and started giggling out loud, I stared out at the scenery, most of me waiting to high dive it into the ocean. It looked soooo beautiful... plus I was hot!! (the weather was perfect by the way).
scenic shots
Alright.... so with the new course changes from the road collapse, we got to take a lil trip off the beaten path through Point Loma. 3 miles left to go. Point Loma was very pretty but there was another freaking hill in there. bastards!! Somewhere around this point or just before Point Loma, the 415 pace group came back to bite my ass and passed me. I kept going anyway. I didn't stop, except when I needed hydration.
With one mile left to go, I triiiied to think happy thoughts but I had hit that point again where I just wanted to be done!! And all I had left were HILLS... it was really an encouraging feeling to just keep seeing uphills... steep uphills. I was cursing my life for sure!! I had no idea how far ahead M was... but from how she looked when she passed me I was sure she had kicked some ass.
As I crossed the finish line, I threw my hands in the air, and grabbed that damn medal. That shit was MINE!!! WOOOO!! I had just finished my 2nd marathon! I was very excited but also very dead :) I walked through the finish line festival, and found R and M. I could barely move my legs and body. OOOO Post-race body pain is the bees knees!
We did it!!
My friend AMM got 2nd freaking place!!! She's my hero! She went 3:09! wow.... I don't think I will EVER be that fast.. but I can dream. Any way my results are below. Miranda seriously was so awesome in her first marathon - she went 4:19!!!! Hot damn!! :) Way to go girlfriend. When asked if she would do another... she said immediately after the race "NO!" BUTTT after the pain had subsided and she realized she was rock star, she said maybe! haha got her hooked??? eh... I don't know about hooked, but I think we both agree that we want to see how fast we can go on a flatter course.
All in all I was very happy with how the race went. Like I said above, I didn't really have a race plan going into this after everything happened with my hip. In my mind, I wanted to go at least under 4:30, if i was super lucky around 4 hours. Well I did go under my first goal and went 4:27! So I was very pleased with that.... and with a bad hip and major hills that I was not trained for! This got my motivated for the Marine Corps Marathon that I'm doing with Natalie in October here in DC. I want to train to rock out, and go around 3:45. First a few triathlons :)
More on the rest of the trip sometime soon! Hope you enjoyed the race report. Sadly I didn't have my watch set up to get mile paces :( but M has changed that now for future races. Thanks M!!
Oh and post-race we laid out on the beach in Carmel.... gorgeous, and I got tan :) yay!!!
of course I got my sunset photos in :) take me back!!
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way to go, kris!!! i'm so bummed i haven't seen you in forever. you're a machine & so inspiring!
ReplyDeleteSo is this the end of the food/running blog?
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